Mount Neverwhere
A floating chunk of rock that’s vaguely ‘mountain shaped’ with several chambers located within its mass that have been hollowed out and converted to use as living and work space. The name “Mount Neverwhere” comes from the idea that it’s “never where” it should be. Whenever he goes back to look for it where it should have been, he discovers that it’s moved. It takes him a while to realize that the thing moves in a particular orbit around some central location Details From below, the floating chunk of rock is hidden behind a misty veil of clouds that would render it difficult to locate. This veil can be thought of as a bubble of air surrounding the floating mountain that insulates it from the effects of the various areas of the Hedge. The sky around the hedge remains what one might find in a late-spring day; bright and sunny but not the oppressive heat of summer. The breezes are sweet, the air is warm and the sky is a sea of endless blue.The movement of the floating “mountain” is subtle and slow enough that there are no great gusts of wind due to the travel. In fact, the path the mass of stone takes could take a week to pass through a particular area and perhaps another two between them. The mountain floats around on a set path (because no one has told it to go anywhere else) focused near the Needle Pines grid square. It passes over the marshlands to the east, to plot squares to the north and west and then to a forested area in the south. Surface *A)The Landing: This large, flat area is where the Icarus airship is often stored between missions. It’s large enough for a vertical take off and landing of the airship with only a few trees to the one side. *B)The Garden; This is a small rocky clearing near the edge of the island where plots of goblin fruit are grown. One plot lies on either side of the trail. *C)Cave: This is the mouth of the cave that lies below the Landing. Sealed with a simple, wooden door, the cave leads to the chambers below the top of the island. The Door Accessing the lower chambers is generally through the door which seals off the cave system from the surface level. The thick, wooden door is set within a carved frame with a small, simple window to the left. Stones are piled around the frame and the window to fill in the space around the mouth of the cave to seal it off save for the door. However, there are some doorways opened through the Hedge which allow transport to and from the floating island to other locations both mundane and magical. These doorways are located in the lower chambers beyond this entrance. Once you pass through the door you enter a winding staircase that wraps around to your right and eventually ends up in the main ‘living’ area of the Hollow; commonly referred to as “The Den”. The Den This is mostly the basic living area of the Hollow with a stair leading up to the surface level above and another that wraps around to the chamber below. The den is a spacious chamber with a hearth that never seems to need wood to burn but is always lit to fill the room with warmth and amber light. There’s a feasting table and seats for six people plus plenty of niches carved out of the walls for people to flop down and relax. Nearly every effort has been made to make this chamber feel less like a hole in a big, floating rock and more like some comfortable, protected space with soft light, warm colors and comfy textures. Candles of wax and of glass line the walls in small alcoves here and there to provide plenty of illumination. The den is also the location where the door(s) connect to the Hollow. It would be the hub of the Hollow’s activity - where most people come in and leave from when they’re not using the ship or other means of flight. The Library This chamber is just below the Den in the upside-down arrangement of the subterranean “tower” of the hollow with windows that look out and various alchemical and thaumaturgical doo-dads scattered about. The library has two windows that look out to the sky outside. The chamber is half repository for books and archives and also a bit of a laboratory for experiments in brewing various alchemical concoctions. A number of glass candles sit in carved alcoves around the room as well as a few clusters here and there of glowing crystals which complement the amber-yellow of the glass candles with blue and green light. Two long, library-like tables line the room with bench seats on either side of them. Bookshelves have been carved into the stone walls of the place to accommodate books, tools, jars, etc. The Forge The Workshop is the lower chamber with a winding stair that leads up to the Library and eventually down to the Grotto below. The shop has, as you might expect it, a working forge within it for the creation of all sorts of things. It also has a window with a thin pane of some kind of glass / crystal where one can look out to the sky outside. Anvils and hammers of various size and sort are found on work tables and benches around the room allowing more than one person to work on a number of projects at once. This is where Hollowers could work on hedgespun raiments and weapons. The Grotto The Grotto is the lowest chamber in Mount Neverwhere, resting below the Library and often locked behind a wooden door. The grotto has natural sources of water that collect in a central pool though no one has been able to find the source. Light enters the grotto through a window-sized hole in the side of the mountain that leads into the chamber through a narrow tunnel. The rocky steps around the central pool are dotted with moss and things and is where the Hollow grows some special goblin fruit. *Grotto Pool: The pool at the center of the grotto is easily shallow enough that one could stand up within but deep enough that the water would come to their shoulders. The pool is wide enough so that someone could swim a lap or two easily (roughly the size of a backyard pool) though circular in shape. It’s thought that some kind of fungus makes the water glow but whatever the source, the whole pool glows with a soft blue-green light. Category:Landmark Category:Hedge